


i have always been a storm

by darkcyan



Series: Tumblr Fics [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Avatar!Natsume, Avatar!Reiko, Multi, Natsume characters in the Avatar universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 05:37:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4467368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkcyan/pseuds/darkcyan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reiko comes to the Air Temples late, and no one realizes that she is the Avatar until at thirteen -- a standoffish, angry thirteen -- she accidentally firebends.  </p>
<p>Takashi grows up an Air Nomad, seeing and hearing things no one else can see; it is not until he is sixteen and the elders inform him that he is the Avatar that he realizes his visions are not delusions, but memories. Of previous Avatars, but most often of a flash of long silver hair in his peripheral vision: the Avatar some people called 'Cursed', his grandmother, Reiko.</p>
<p>This is their story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i have always been a storm

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another fic inspired by [messing](http://cyanmnemosyne.tumblr.com/post/124389160008/u-and-p-for-the-meme-to-make-it-hardmodefor) [around](http://cyanmnemosyne.tumblr.com/post/124479139758/ooh-for-the-atla-au-i-also-like-the-idea-of) on Tumblr. This time, on the subject of: What if Reiko and Natsume both were the Avatar, how would Natsume's desire to find out more about his grandmother parallel his journey to become a fully realized Avatar? 
> 
> The story kind of ... spiraled out of control after that. :) 
> 
> **Note:** if any worldbuilding looks suspiciously familiar to fellow fans of Vathara's [Embers](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5398503/1/Embers), it's not intentional. But I've been a huge fan of that story for almost as long as I've been a fan of Avatar, so I'm not always sure where one begins and the other ends anymore, heh. 
> 
> (Title is a lyric from "Storms", by Fleetwood Mac.)

Let's say that a few hundred, or maybe a few thousand years before Aang embarks on his journey, another airbender Avatar is born.  

Reiko is an unlucky early birth, born in the midst of her mother's travels.  She almost doesn’t survive, but her stubbornness sees her through.  Unfortunately, her mother is not so lucky. 

She spends the first several years of her life an airbender child in a small village that doesn’t know quite what to do with her. They start turning against her, bit by bit, with each gust of wind accidentally generated or gone awry.  She’s not a _bad_ child, but she’s a bit on the mischievous side, and doesn’t always understand the consequences of her actions. 

By the time she’s found and brought back to the Air Temple (maybe her mother went too far off course and it took them a while to track down her most likely last position, maybe the local temple was just too pre-occupied by other matters -- whatever the reason, let’s say it takes about ten years), Reiko has learned that regardless of the truth, she’ll be blamed for objects knocked over or blown away. Sometimes, she'll be blamed for mischief that has nothing to do with the wind at all. 

She’s decided that if she’s going to be blamed for everything anyway, she might as well have fun. 

No one thinks to do the Avatar test on the recalcitrant ten-year-old who’s brought back to the Temple. (It’s not that she liked where she was, she just doesn’t expect this place to be any better.  True, the food’s better.  And she can learn a lot of cool new tricks here.  But she’s still just ... a bit too _different_.) They assume that the Avatar appeared elsewhere, even as years continue to pass and there is no sign of the new Avatar in any of the other Temples, either. The elders get together and consult and worry, as, to a lesser extent, does the world.

Then Reiko is thirteen -- a standoffish, angry thirteen, made all the more angry by the fact that everyone around her is trying to convince her to be more serene because that’s just how airbenders _are,_ and yes she knows they’re trying to help but that makes things _worse_ not _better_.  Everyone’s always so _patient_ with her and it drives her crazy because she’s _not_ like that and she never _will_ be.

(The Air Temples forget, sometimes, that air can be the storm as well as the gentle breeze. Reiko understands this, lives it, even though she can never quite find the words to explain it.)

And then she accidentally firebends.

* * *

She gets a new round of teachers, to be patient with her in public and exasperated in private; she gets a new set of responsibilities that she never asked for and never wanted. 

She takes to firebending like a natural, her waterbending is just past mediocre, and she will never be any good at earthbending.  (She could be, if she ever tried.  She’s certainly more than stubborn enough. But that very stubbornness works against her here.)

Then she’s set loose.  She’s told to go save the world, though from what, no one seems to know. 

... Really it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it doesn’t go all that well. 

She tries, at first, in her own way.  She tries to do well.  But she’s always a bit too young, a bit too angry, a bit too _something._

(a bit too different) 

It doesn’t really work out. 

So she bounces around the world, making mischief, having fun, doing good here and there, in bits and pieces. 

At nineteen, she’s pregnant.  When asked, she cheerfully claims she doesn’t know who the father is.  (And even the Air Temples, for all their emphasis on the primary role of teachers over parents, want to know)

(She knows.  Of course she knows.  But she feels trapped enough already; she would never drag anyone down with her, whether they claim not to care or not.  She knows how easy it is to lie, and how easy it is convince yourself that a lie is the truth, and how in the end, she’s just ... too _something_ for everyone.  Why would this be any different?)

After the last few weeks of her pregnancy that she spends (trapped) in the Air Temple, both she and they are more than happy to part ways again once she’s recovered.  She considers, briefly, bringing the child with her.  But it’s a wild world out there, and often a dangerous one. 

She loves the child -- she loves her daughter -- as fiercely and as wholeheartedly as she does everything else.  But she knows her daughter will be safer here, where she doesn’t have to worry about growing up to be just as _something_ as her mom. 

(where she’ll hopefully be given a chance to grow up as something other than the Avatar’s kid)

And Reiko can’t stay. She _can’t_.

So she leaves.  She leaves and never returns and tells herself that it’ll be better (easier) that way for both of them. 

* * *

Reiko dies young -- in her early thirties. 

The world, on the whole, either doesn’t really notice her passing, or breathes a bit of a sigh of relief.  It’s not that she was _bad_ , exactly.  She was just. _Different_.  And she didn’t really leave her mark on the word -- there was no great disaster that she helped avert.

(She _did_ leave her mark on the world, of course, in every small thing she did to help, because she was bored, or refusing to admit she was lonely, or paying back a debt that no one else saw as one, or just because she could.  But the world rarely notices the small things.)

The next Avatar, they think.  Surely he (or she) will be a _proper_ Avatar. 

* * *

None of the next three Avatars survive past the age of three.

Disease, accident, disease again -- the world is not always fair or kind, especially to children that small. 

The last -- a young girl in a small Fire village on one of the more remote islands -- is not even recognized as the Avatar before she dies. 

While the world continues to focus its attention and its hopes on the Fire Nation, Reiko’s daughter has a son.  She names him Takashi.

* * *

Takashi is recognized as the Avatar fairly early on, although as with Aang many hundreds of years later, they don’t tell him immediately. 

His childhood is mostly happy.  He knows that he is the grandson of the last airbender Avatar, Reiko, who some call the Cursed Avatar.  

(After all, why else would the circle have come back around to Air so quickly?  Although why an Avatar would have bothered with a curse that only took effect after her death, no one had a good answer for.  Spite, perhaps?  Mischief?  Everyone knew of her, but no one knew her well enough to say what she would have really thought.)

it doesn’t come up often or usually very overtly, his lineage, but it colors some people’s interactions with him more than others. 

He’s a little bit different, too.  Sometimes he sees memories that are not his -- although it is not until years later that he learns whose memories they are.  Usually while asleep, but sometimes when he’s awake, too, if the memory is particularly strong.

Usually they’re just fragments.  Sometimes, if a memory maps too closely to his current environment, he’ll get confused.  Greet people who aren’t there.  Respond to conversations that happened hundreds of years ago.  Avoid obstacles where there are none.  Run into things he can’t see. 

After the first several times he mentions seeing something that is, to everyone else, not there, he stops mentioning it.  He’s not ridiculed, not by anyone other than a couple of children who are immediately reprimanded by their teachers.  But it’s clear that this -- that whatever he can see -- is different.  Strange.  So it's just ... easier, not to mention it.  

(After the second time he steps off a ledge that used to extend several feet farther, he starts bringing his glider with him everywhere.  Just in case.)

(He tells the shaken monks who rescue him, those first two times, that he was just distracted, not watching where he was walking.  They accept his explanation; one reminds him with a laugh and a smile that it doesn’t do to be _too_ detached from the world.)

Still.  The memories are only occasional things, and usually benign.  He’s seen as a bit odd, but also one of the calmest, kindest of the children in the temple.  He’s always happy to help the other children figure out airbending moves that they don’t pick up as quickly as he does -- he’s one of the strongest airbenders in the class, but so nice about it that no one really minds -- and they occasionally bounce erasers off his head to wake him up when he falls asleep in history. 

“You are the Avatar,” he is told at sixteen.  “We wanted you to have a happy childhood, to not be treated as different and strange, so we didn’t tell you before now.” 

Takashi, who has never bent anything but air because he’s never tried, because he's never felt the need to, thinks it would have been good to know earlier.  To have an explanation for the dreams that sometimes haunt him, asleep and awake, because he knows, now, as clearly as if someone told him, that that’s what they were -- memories of past Avatars.

(How many of them were from his grandmother, he wonders?)

But he also thinks it would be ungrateful to say so.  So he smiles, and thanks them, and asks politely what the next steps in his training are. 

His childhood was mostly happy. 

* * *

His waterbending instructor is an older man from the Water village called Tanuma, built in a swampy area bordering what is beginning to coalesce into the Earth Kingdom. 

He has one fellow student -- a boy about his age named Kaname, his instructor’s son. 

Kaname is not the strongest waterbender in the world.  He’s not the weakest, either.  Just, “Solidly mediocre,” he likes to say, with a sheepish smile.  But it is by watching the smoothness of his movements -- how each action flows gently but inexorably to the next, like and yet so unlike the sharper, higher movements of airbending -- that Takashi starts to really _get_ waterbending. 

When he and Kaname work in concert, they’re far stronger than either of them -- even Takashi -- would have been on their own. 

It will take years of careful study before Takashi can achieve, on his own, achieve anything like the same power and grace that seems to arise naturally in Kaname’s presence. 

When he moves on from Tanuma Village -- the world may be more or less at peace, but now that it has an Avatar who’s managed to survive childhood, it’s eager to see him through the rest of his training -- his primary instructor stays behind, but Kaname comes along with him. 

“Is your dad all right with that?” Takashi asks, having learned that parents are accorded a lot more importance here than in the Air Temples, where to a large extent it is the village that raises the child.

“He asked me what took me so long,” Kaname replies, his smile wry.

* * *

When Takashi tells Kaname about his visions, he says “That must be hard,” like he means it.  He asks, “If you don’t mind telling me about it, what do you see?”

When Takashi tells Kaname about his grandmother, he says, “I’m sorry you never had the opportunity to meet her.”  He says, “It must be hard for you, to hear her called ‘Cursed’.”

He says, “She must be very important to you.”

And Takashi realizes that yes.  This vague, unknown shadow, who his mother had never met.  The specter who has quietly haunted his life, with hair as silver and eyes as green as his own.  This person who ultimately, he knows very little about aside from her name (and what other people say about her, which is as contradictory as it is often negative). 

Yes.  Reiko, his grandmother, is very important to him. 

When Takashi tells Kaname that what he’d like to do, someday, is travel the world and find all the places his grandmother’s been; bear witness to the actions she's taken and the kindness she's done; build the truth out of all the fragments of misinformation that is all he knows of her, Kaname says, “I can come along, too, right?”

* * *

On the way to Límíng, where Takashi will meet his earthbending teacher, they encounter a travelling circus.  His instructors want to move on, but in a rare moment of rebellion, Takashi asks to stay.  “The Avatar is supposed to represent the world,” he says.  “How can I do that if I don’t know the people in it?”

His favorite act by far is the fire dance, done by a blond man several years his senior.  It is half-firebending, half dance in truth, and Takashi leaves the show dazed, the bright sparks of flame still dancing before his eyes. 

He runs into the dancer himself several hours later, at a rare time when he’s alone.  (It is not that he and Kaname make a point of sticking together; simply that they both feel most comfortable at the other’s side.) 

The dancer introduces himself as Shuuichi; says, “So you’re the Avatar?” in a considering tone, eyes sharp as the swords used in the sword dance that had been another of Takashi’s favorite acts. 

(In truth, sharper.)

“How did you know?” Takashi asks.

“A handful of Air monks traveling with a Water tribesman, with no goods to sell but no problem finding the funds to travel?  When all the world knows that the Avatar is currently traveling the world to learn the other three bending styles?  It’s not a difficult conclusion to leap to.”  Shuuichi’s smile is as sharp as his eyes.  “Although I didn’t _know_ until you told me just now.”

Chagrined, Takashi asks if there’s some reason he wanted to know; if there’s something he can do.  (He will, if he can; if his responsibilities allow.)  “I really enjoyed your show,” he adds, the words awkward in his mouth. He doesn’t know how to reach out; he’s always been too afraid that whatever -- or whoever -- he reached out to wouldn’t actually been there. 

“I’m glad to hear that,” Shuuichi replies, and his eyes and smile seem a bit warmer, now.  “And no reason, really.  Just curiosity.”  He pauses.  “I could show you a few tricks.”

Takashi hesitates.  Air, Water, Earth, Fire.  That’s the order he’s supposed to learn them in, he knows. 

But no one has ever told him why.

(And he heard, just once, someone mention that Reiko had always had an uncanny affinity towards fire.)

“Please,” he says. 

Shuuichi doesn’t have the time to teach him much -- the burning leaf, whose purpose Takashi grasps immediately; basic safety tips; how to create a bit of flame to light a campfire at night.  How to put a flame _out._   Small, useful tricks. 

“Will I ever be able to do what you can?” Takashi asks wistfully. 

Shuuichi grins.  “Perhaps, after many years of practice.  _If_ you loosen up.”

“What?”

He gestures towards the burning leaf, flame holding steady in Takashi’s hands.  “The small stuff, you’re picking up faster than I’ve ever seen.  Benefits of being the Avatar, I suspect.  But for the bigger stuff?”  He looks at Takashi again, eyes once again sharp.  “No.  You’re too afraid.  I don’t know of what, but until _you_ figure that out, I suggest you stay small.  Flame feeds on fear just as easily as on wood.  Or air.”

“Takashi?  Is that you?”

Kaname’s voice.  The leaf flares briefly in his hand, and Takashi overcompensates, accidentally smothering the flame completely. 

When he looks up, Shuuichi is gone. 

“What are you doing out here, so late at night?” Kaname asks, yawning.  “Did something happen?  Did you see something?” 

If not for the proof sitting in his hand, still a bit warm, Takashi would have wondered, himself.  He folds his hand around the leaf, gently, and smiles up at Kaname.  “No, no vision. Let’s go back inside, and I’ll tell you about it.”

* * *

Takashi’s earthbending instructor is an older woman who still moves like someone a third her age, who is a pleasant conversationalist but has eyes sharper than Shuuichi’s when teaching. 

His earthbending lessons are a disaster. 

It’s not that he doesn’t respect her.  He does.  It’s not that he isn’t trying.  He is.

He picks up the stances without too much trouble.  He can pick up pebbles.  He can shift rocks already in flight, although his instructor tells him that when he’s distracted, his technique slips and starts to look more like waterbending than earthbending.  But he can’t seem to grasp the bigger stuff. 

_“You’re too afraid,”_ Shuuichi’s voice rings in his ear. 

“I wonder if that’s the problem,” he says to Kaname after a particularly frustrating lesson.  “If it’s true for firebending, maybe it’s true for earthbending, too?”

“Maybe,” Kaname says doubtfully.  “You definitely shouldn’t be afraid of your element.  But I don’t think you are, are you?” 

After a moment’s hesitation, Takashi shakes his head. He doesn’t think so, either. 

“And earthbending seems pretty different from waterbending, from what I’ve seen.  So.  I think it’s probably a different problem?”

“Great,” Takashi says.  The only thing better than having one problem he doesn’t know how to solve is having _two_ of them. 

Kaname grins, not as hesitant anymore.  “Well, you’re the Avatar.  It wouldn’t be fair if it was _all_ easy, would it?”

Takashi laughs.  “No, I guess it wouldn’t.”

* * *

Several days later, after yet another exhausting, frustrating session with very little progress made, Kaname says to him, “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Takashi looks up, surprised and (although he would never admit it) just the slightest bit jealous.  He knows it’s unfair to assume Kaname hasn’t made other friends, especially with all the spare hours he has while Takashi is at his earthbending lessons.  But he has to admit, it comes as a bit of a shock.  “Sure.  When?”

“Is now good?”

Takashi is exhausted and frustrated and jealous and ashamed of his pettiness and a host of other emotions that make meeting new people _now_ a bad plan.  But this is Kaname. So he says, “Sure.”

* * *

Kaname leads him through the winding streets of Límíng, outwardly confident in his path until he sheepishly admits that he must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, and they end up having to backtrack.  Eventually, they reach their destination: a small shop that sells scribing supplies, with an advertisement for children's earthbending lessons posted in bright colors next to the door.  Takashi eyes Kaname suspiciously, but his friend ignores him and opens the door. 

A girl about their age, her reddish-blonde hair not that much longer than their own, lays a scroll to the side and looks up.  “Oh!  You’re back.  Kaname, right?”

(Is she Kaname’s type? Takashi wonders.  Then wonders why he’s wondering, because really, it’s actually _none of his business_.)

“Hello, Tooru,” Kaname says, and his shy smile is _not helping_.  “This is Takashi.  He’s the friend that I mentioned.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Takashi,” Tooru says, her smile friendly and open.  “It must have been a shock, realizing you’re a bender so late.  If you’d feel too self-conscious with the other kids, I could put aside some time for private lessons.”  She eyes the door.  “It would have to be pretty late in the day, though.  The kids’ lessons are usually in the morning, and I’ve got the shop to run during the day.”

“That would be fine,” Takashi says weakly, as the realization of what Kaname has tried to do for him threatens to steal his breath away.  “I’m busy during the day, anyway.”

* * *

Takashi’s anonymity lasts about ten minutes into the first lesson, when Tooru frowns and calls a halt.  “You’ve studied other bending styles before, haven’t you?” she asks.  “Your stances are remarkably good for a beginner, but.”  She frowns, and thinks, and finally says, “When you move, or when you’re not focusing, you move a lot more like him.” She gestures towards Kaname, seated on a rock in easy listening distance, but hopefully out of the way of most accidents. 

(Takashi isn’t too worried.  Kaname carries two waterskins, and he can take care of himself.)

“Except lighter on your feet.  You root pretty well, but when you shift stances you’re awful at _staying_ rooted.”  She cracks a smile.  "Earthbenders aren't supposed to bounce." 

“I _know_ ,” Takashi says. 

Kaname snickers, having told him that more than once ( _far_ more than once) before.  As has his earthbending instructor.

Takashi looks towards Kaname -- who, laughing, is no help, whatsoever -- and then considers Tooru.  She’s going out of her way to help him; hasn’t even requested payment yet for the lessons.  It’s not really fair to her to try and hide his experience, not when for all he knows, his problem with earthbending might very well be hidden there.  “It’s probably because I spent my first sixteen years learning airbending,” he admits. 

Tooru makes the connection almost immediately. “That would make a difference,” she agrees.  Eyes Kaname. “Isn’t he a bit young to be your waterbending instructor?”

“My primary instructor was his dad, actually,” Takashi says.  “Kaname’s just tagging along.”

“Hey!”  Kaname picks up a small rock and throws it at him. 

Takashi plants his feet; settles back a bit as he catches the rock; pushes forward as he sends it back.

Kaname ducks as it whizzes past.  They share a grin.

“Your weight’s a bit too far forward, and you're exaggerating your movements,” Tooru says.  “Which is fine, for a beginner, but in terms of stances, you’re probably ready to move past that.”

She eyes Kaname.  Eyes Takashi.  Smiles.  She lifts a rock about the size of Takashi’s head with a shift of her stance that he doubts he would have seen if he hadn’t been watching her already.  “Now how about we try that again?”

* * *

“Stubbornness is the most important part,” Tooru says, an hour or so later, when Takashi and Kaname explain about his block over a jug of water and a quick snack shared between the three of them.  (Kaname lets Takashi and Tooru take the majority; points out that they’re the ones who’ve been doing the actual work.)  “I think you’re right; your stances are -- well, there’s room for improvement, there always is.  But they’re certainly serviceable enough.  And you clearly have more than enough power to work with.”

“That’s what my other instructor has been saying,” he admits.  “I don’t know, maybe I just don’t have what it takes.”  He certainly prefers to avoid confrontation when he can. 

“I don’t know,” Kaname says.  “I mean, remember the circus?  You were pretty stubborn, then.”

He still gets a sick feeling in his stomach when he thinks of that argument.  Even if he ended up winning it.  Even if everything turned out all right in the end.  “It was important,” he says quietly. 

Tooru eyes him, though there’s no judgment in her voice.  “And learning earthbending isn’t?” 

“It’s not -- I didn’t mean it that way,” Takashi says hastily. 

“Well, try thinking about how you felt then,” she says, brushing her hands off on her trousers as she stands.  “Your determination to -- well, whatever the argument was about.  Be like that, but towards the rock.”

His first several tries are miserable failures, too distracted by the memory of how much he hated arguing to have any sort of focus at all.  Slowly, over the rest of that lesson and the next several following, he starts getting the hang of it. 

It's a slight improvement, but at this point he'll take what he can get.

* * *

Unfortunately, while he makes leaps and bounds in what Tooru calls “reactive” bending, he’s still completely incapable of picking up anything larger than the size of his fist, or making the earth rise and fall in the many ways his primary instructor keeps showing him.   

They both, his instructor and Tooru, try to explain the motions, the actions, the _feel_ , in every way they can think of.  And it makes sense to Takashi.  He gets it.  He just can’t make it _work_. 

One day Takashi and Kaname make their usual trip down to Tooru’s shop and find her helplessly distracted.  “I’m going to have to cancel tonight, I’m so sorry,” she says, and pushes tangled hair out of her face that almost immediately falls back into place.  “But I’ve got this huge order at the last minute, and there’s no way I’ll be able to finish it in time otherwise --”

“Can we help?”  Takashi and Kaname ask in chorus.  Glance at each other, and smile. 

(Takashi vaguely recalls that jealous feeling, when he first met Tooru.  It’s long since worn away, under countless lessons and encouragements and jokes and -- well, simply time. He can’t imagine being jealous anymore.)

(He’s slowly beginning to realize that he can barely imagine a life without Tooru in it, either.)

“Would you?” Tooru asks, and if they hadn’t already been convinced, the hopelessly grateful note to her voice would have done it. 

* * *

Much later that night, when they’re finally finished making, sorting, and packing the order, the three of them sit, dazed, in the small apartment above Tooru's shop. 

“No, stubbornness definitely isn’t your problem,” she says, a bit giddily, and laughs.  Takashi and Kaname join in, just as giddy.

“What’s it like, earthbending?” Kaname asks.  He’s asked before -- both of them have -- but there’s something different tonight, in the dim yellow light of Tooru’s lamp, all three of them exhausted past the point where they ought to be sleeping, none of them willing to give in and let the night end.  

“It’s like ...” Tooru leans her head back and looks at the ceiling, raising an ink-stained, paper-cut hand.  (Not that Takashi's or Kaname's look any better.)  “Like.  You’re there.  And the earth is there.  And you’re _part_ of the earth.” 

“We’re all connected,” Kaname says sagely.  It’s one of his dad’s favorite sayings. 

“Right.” Tooru nods.  “And the earth ... it is what it is, you know?  And you have to _understand_ what it is.  And then you have to convince it that it wants to be something else, you know?” She waves the hand around vaguely.  “But it’s not _actually_ something else, because it’s still the earth.  And you’re still part of it, and it’s still part of you.  You know?”

“You just said ‘you know’ three times,” Kaname says, and they all laugh again. 

“ _Because_ ,” Tooru aims a half-hearted kick at Kaname’s leg; misses. “we’re all connected.”

Takashi raises his own hand towards the ceiling, wondering what it is that Tooru saw when she did it.  “But you’re not _part_ of the earth.  You’re you, and I’m me, and Kaname’s Kaname,” he says.  “I know we’re all connected, but we’re all separate too.  Right?”

He looks down into Tooru’s considering gaze.  “Give me your hand,” she says. 

A bit confused, but not inclined to protest, he does. 

Her hand is warm, and a little bit sweaty still.

“You’re still me, and I’m still you,” she says, “but we’re connected.” 

“Right,” Takashi says, still not sure where this is going. 

She pulls, suddenly, towards herself and down, and Takashi overbalances in a flail of arms and legs. He plants his face in her armpit, in about the most ungraceful move ever, then bounces off and ends up half-sprawled across her lap. 

“Ow,” he says, staring up at the ceiling, his nose stinging. 

Somewhere outside of his immediate field of view, Kaname is laughing. 

He still hasn’t let go of Tooru’s hand.

“Maybe we’re separate,” Tooru says, “but when we connect, I can still affect you.”

It shouldn’t sound that deep.  He knows it’s just the hour and their state of mutual exhaustion that makes it sound like anything more than a basic tenet of martial arts that he probably learned before he could walk. 

And yet. 

His free hand gropes outwards; finds Kaname’s leg and holds tight.  “But how?” he asks.  Until the words are out of his mouth -- hanging small and pitiful in the air -- he has no idea just how much he wants -- _needs_ \-- to know the answer.

Tears prickle at the corners of his eyes; he wonders if he can blame them on his stinging nose or his exhaustion.

A warm hand rests on his hand on Kaname’s leg; he turns his head to see his friend leaning forward, smiling crookedly.  “You reach out, and they reach back,” he says. 

Takashi looks the other way, and Tooru smiles.

He stares back up at the ceiling, and like a weight off his chest that he’d been holding so long he’d forgotten it was there, asks, “But how do you know they’re there?”

* * *

It’s not an instantaneous fix, nor a perfect one.  Some part of Takashi will always be unable to trust the ground in front of his feet, the evidence of his eyes and ears, because sometimes it truly _isn’t_ there. 

But knowing -- knowing that _that_ was the problem, and how had he not realized it before when it seemed so simple now? -- knowing makes all the difference. 

His connection to the earth is stronger now; he reaches out just like he used as a small child, when they’d practice throws on each other so they could practice falling.  Learning the movements they’d use later, once their connection to their element was stronger. 

It feels a little bit like the earth is reaching back, the way it reacts so much more responsively to his reach.

It’s frustrating, that he’s spent this long being told that he needs to connect to the earth, to convince the earth to do his bidding, to find out the secret is ... exactly that.  He should have been able to understand long before now, he thinks, especially when the pieces were all there, the entire time. 

But somehow the words didn’t make _sense_ , until that night sprawled across Tooru’s lap, both hands warm and _connected_. 

A part of him misses the open road; looks forward to when he can resume his journey, to when he can start his _real_ journey, to find all the places his grandmother left her mark. 

The rest of him is _home_.

* * *

Everyone knows about Tooru now.  It would have been difficult to hide, when he and Kaname never returned home that night; when Takashi skidded into the following day’s lesson a few minutes late and out of breath from the run, his hair almost a dusty blond from the lesson Tooru had put him through to try and cement his newfound understanding, his heart light with a tentative feeling of triumph. 

(The occasional speculation on what Kaname and he had been doing out all night drifts to his ears on a stray breeze, and he blushes to the tips of his ears.  What they have is ... not that.  He can’t help but wonder, though.)

Tooru is invited up to visit, and his instructor greets her with a rare smile of approval.

(The rumors change, once their authors hear about Tooru, to include her as well.  Takashi blushes even harder, after that.)

* * *

Still, not much changes for a while.  Tooru has her shop and her children’s classes.  Takashi has his earthbending lessons, which are finally, _finally_ starting to make real progress.  Kaname sometimes watches Takashi’s lessons, sometimes lends a hand around Tooru’s shops, sometimes disappears off on his own. 

The three of them still meet, most evenings, but gradually the additional lessons shorten and eventually disappear entirely, in favor of dinners and exploration of the city that is new to Takashi and Kaname but that Tooru has lived in all her life.  Of just enjoying being together. 

“All things are transient,” says an Air monk one evening, walking by his side just long enough to speak; gone in the next breath.

Takashi looks down at his hands -- ink-stained, again, the left still a bit sticky from the dango he’d just finished eating -- his arms covered in dark green sleeves of a distinctive Earth Kingdom cut -- and for one long moment, doesn’t recognize them.  Doesn’t recognize what he’s become. 

“I’m not a very good Air monk,” he says. 

Kaname looks up.  “Mwy’th thad?” he mumbles around a mouthful of dango.

Tooru rolls her eyes.  “Finish chewing, _then_ speak.”

And Takashi’s heart is just.  _so full_.  that for a moment he can’t speak.  “I’m too attached,” he finally forces out, through a throat almost too tight.  “If I ever lost either of you --”

“So we’ll make sure you won’t,” Kaname swallows, then says with a shrug. “Not like we’re planning on going anywhere, either.”

Takashi’s gaze slides to Tooru as inexorable as the tide, because while he’s come to almost take for granted that Kaname will be there, Tooru has her shop and her lessons and her _life_ here.  And Takashi’s not entirely sure what the rest of his life will hold, but he does know that he won’t -- _can’t_ \-- spend the rest of it here in Límíng.

They all know it, and it’s one of the few things that they don’t discuss. 

“One of my neighbors -- an old friend of my grandfather -- has been interested in getting into the business for a while now.  I don’t want to sell the shop, but we’ve been talking about maybe leasing it to him for a while,” Tooru says. 

Takashi stares, dimly aware of Kaname, equally dumbfounded, at his side. 

She grabs them both, one in each arm, and pulls them close. 

She says, “I love you both too, you idiots.”

She’s shaking. 

They all are. 

* * *

Change cascades. 

This new thing that he has with Kaname and Tooru.  Sometimes it feels just like it always has.  Sometimes they awkwardly fumble towards something different, trying to figure out the shape of something that none of them knows for sure.

But Takashi knows this:  this is the happiest he’s ever been.

(His earthbending instructor has begun to grant his skill a grudging “passable”.)

And then the murders start. 

* * *

Three high-ranking politicians over the course of a week. 

The first two die in their beds, a single swift knife strike to the heart. 

The third, terrified, refuses to sleep, but also refuses to allow his guards in his bedroom at night -- for all he knows, one of _them_ might be the killer in disguise. 

He’s found the next morning, strangled from behind. 

Everyone clamors for the Avatar to _do something_.  Takashi talks with his advisers, who suggest they should perhaps move on -- his earthbending is good enough for the time being; is a local political dispute _really_ worth the Avatar’s attention? 

But Takashi remembers the handful of times he’s glimpsed silver hair out of the corner of his eye; the small kindnesses he’s seen in those memories. 

Even if this weren’t Tooru’s hometown, he thinks he would have done something. 

(He likes to think his grandmother would have approved.)

“The Avatar is supposed to help the world,” he says, spine like stone.  “How can I do that if I don’t help the people in it?”

He, Kaname, and Tooru spend a long afternoon discussing what they know; with Tooru’s knowledge of the local governmental structure and a lot of brainstorming about possible connections between the victims, they narrow down the likely next target (none of them think the murderer is likely to stop here) to three potential candidates. 

Takashi stares at the paper, frustrated, helpless.  “I can’t guard them all on my own.”

Tooru leans into his shoulder.  Kaname kicks him, lightly, under the table.  “But you’re not alone,” she reminds him. 

* * *

Takashi waits in the dark of the politician’s bedroom, watching the window because watching him sleep seems a bit too invasive.  He sleeps peacefully -- apparently he has faith in the Avatar’s protection.  Takashi is ... not entirely sure how he feels about that. 

The waiting is interminable, and made worse by his worry for Tooru and Kaname.  They can take care of themselves at least as well as he can (probably better), and he _knows_ this.  But when he considers that either of them might be confronting the assassin _right now_ , without his knowledge, without any chance of him leaping in to help --

But maybe he's worrying over nothing. Maybe the assassin won’t come at all, tonight. 

That hope is dashed, about halfway through the night, but at least the assassin does the next best thing -- he comes for the politician Takashi is guarding. 

Takashi tackles him on the way from the window to the bed (the politician had been very firm about not wanting any bending if it was possible to avoid it -- “it’s too destructive”, he’d said), and they grapple briefly. 

The assassin is male, a few centimeters taller than him, likely a few kg heavier than Takashi, but with the same wiry build.  He throws Takashi into the bedside table, knocking the lamp off (Takashi thinks _“oops”_ ); throws a knife that goes wide as Takashi rebounds back towards him, and dashes towards the window. 

Takashi hesitates at the window -- but the evidence so far seems to point to a single assassin, and he can already hear movement below.  Someone should be upstairs shortly. 

He follows, a brief gust of wind assisting his leap. 

They race across rooftops; occasionally down streets and blind alleys, but after Takashi almost catches the assassin by trapping him between two large paving stones -- his steps too light for someone of Takashi’s skill level to simple grab and hold -- the assassin keeps to the roofs, where on thatch Takashi has nothing to pull from, and on slate he’s too conscious of the damage he might be doing to others’ roofs. 

He tosses gusts of wind when he can, although most of his concentration is bound up in running; the assassin rolls with the few that hit almost as gracefully as if he were an airbender himself.  There’s something strangely familiar about those movements, yet Takashi can’t think of anyone he knows who would do this. 

Until suddenly the pieces fit together, with a feeling uncomfortably close to betrayal, as he corners the assassin at the edge of a roof too tall too leap off safely and too far from the nearest building to reach unaided, and the assassin whips around, sending a burst of flame arcing towards Takashi’s chest. 

The assassin wears a strange mask -- white, with two small horns; a single, stylized eye and a smile.  But even as Takashi redirects his flames safely out into open air with one hand, and uses the momentum of the motion to toss a pinpoint burst of air with his other hand that sends the mask tumbling away in the other direction, he already knows who he’ll find underneath. 

“Hello, Avatar,” Shuuichi says, eyes and smile just as sharp as the first time they met.  “I see you’ve learned a few things since the last time we met.”

* * *

“ _Why_?” Takashi asks; opens his mouth to ask additional questions before realizing that that’s the only one he cares about. 

“It helps pay the bills,” Shuuichi replies, his smile broad and easy and gleaming in the moonlight -- the sort of smile he’d used during his act, and just as clearly an act now.  “Besides, I like to think I’m making a difference.”

“You can’t make a difference by _killing people_!”

“Don’t be naïve,” Shuuichi snaps.  “Of course you can -- if you kill the right ones.”

Takashi struggles, for a moment, to find the words he needs.  “But it’s not _right_.”  He’s neither a vegetarian nor a complete pacifist, anymore -- not after a series of illuminating talks with Kaname and his dad near the beginning of his stay in their village -- but he does believe this:  once you are dead, there is no chance for change or for redemption. 

He does not believe in denying that chance as anything other than a last resort.

“Surely there’s a more peaceful solution,” he says.  “if you can talk out your differences --”

“Do you truly know anything about the men I’ve killed?”  Shuuichi asks.  “I will admit not to knowing them well, but from the information I was given and have gathered, they’re unlikely to be missed.”

“And what will happen if you just go around killing people?” Takashi asks.  “Won’t change induced by fear just unravel once the fear is gone?”

Shuuichi crosses his arms.  Takashi might have taken that as a reduction in hostilities if he wasn’t well aware of just how high and strong the other man could kick. “And do you have any alternate solutions, or just a bunch of pretty ideals? ‘Talking out your differences’ only works if both sides are willing to listen.”

Still.

That, too, is an uncomfortable truth that Takashi has had to come to terms with. 

“Would they listen to the Avatar?” he asks.  He meets Shuuichi’s eyes.  “I don’t know if my help will be enough, but. Give me a chance.  Please.”

The other man looks at him, face neutral.  Finally, he nods once; kicks several gouts of flame that near-blind Takashi and that he realizes too late were not aimed anywhere near him.

By the time he can refocus, Shuuichi has disappeared. 

* * *

The next morning is an awful one. Not only did he not manage to catch the assassin ( _Shuuichi_ ), but the knife that Takashi had thought went awry had in fact hit exactly the mark it had been aimed at:  the politician Takashi had been guarding. 

The only saving grace was that it had not been a clean strike; he’d lost a lot of blood and would be a long time recovering, but they were fairly certain he would survive. 

“Could you help him?” Takashi asks Kaname.  He knows he couldn’t -- he’d only picked up the very basics of waterbending healing, a choice he’s now regretting. 

Kaname hesitates, shakes his head. “A little bit, maybe.  Not enough to matter.  And with a wound that deep -- I’d be just as likely to seal up something that shouldn’t be sealed, and make everything worse.”  He looks down.  “Sorry.”

Takashi shrugs.  He’d feared as much.  “Not like I could do any better,” he says.  “Once I learn firebending, maybe we can go back and get your dad to teach us more.” 

Kaname brightens.  “Or the Northern Water Tribe!  My dad’s always talked about how good their healers are, there.”  They share a smile, before Kaname says, unusually hesitant.  “Is everything all right?  You weren’t hurt last night, were you?”

_Only emotionally_ , Takashi thinks; dismisses the thought as being pointlessly dramatic.  What did Shuuichi owe him, after all?  They’d only met the once.  (Twice, now.)

He hesitates.

“... Let’s go find Tooru.  She’ll probably want to hear, too.”

* * *

The next time Takashi meets Shuuichi is only hours later, as the three of them walk slowly back from Tooru’s place. 

“Avatar!” a cheery voice calls; all three of them turn to see Shuuichi stroll up, a broad smile on his face.  “Ahaha, I thought it was you.  I don’t suppose you remember me?”

_What are you playing at?_   Takashi wonders; out loud, he says dryly, “You’re difficult to forget.” 

Shuuichi sweeps a bow, as theatrical and fake as the rest of his current persona.  “I aim to please.  How has your journey been going?  You must have learned a lot since we last met.”

“Not particularly, given that it’s been less than a day,” Takashi says.

Cheer bleeds from Shuuichi’s face, his sharp eyes moving from Kaname to Tooru and back to him.  “They already know,” Takashi says.  “Why are you _really_ here?”

“I thought you might be interested in a firebending teacher willing to come to you,” Shuuichi says.  A raised eyebrow.  “Or am I wrong?”

Takashi rocks to the balls of his feet.  Ready, though for what he couldn't say.  “And what do you get out of it?” 

“You don’t think bragging rights as the Avatar’s teacher are enough?” Shuuichi asks, smile gleaming. 

Takashi hopes he looks as unimpressed as he feels.

“You asked me to give you a chance,” Shuuichi says.  “There are things I know or can learn that may help you make the most of it.”

“You’d do that for me?” Takashi asks. 

The dancer -- the assassin -- shrugs.  “It’d hardly be fair otherwise, would it?”

* * *

It takes some convincing, to get his advisers on board with the idea of him learning firebending from some no-name circus performer. 

Though not as much as Takashi expects.  Shuuichi can apparently be quite charming, or so everyone else seems to think. 

Their firebending lessons start where Shuuichi left off, all those months ago, with the handful of tricks that Takashi has long since mastered under Kaname’s careful eye and ready waterskin.  (They’d both ended up with a couple of burns along the way.  But not many, and none too bad for Kaname to easily fix.)

His new instructor nods approvingly, makes a few minor corrections, and begins to demonstrate the next move. 

Takashi waits until he’s done; stops him before he can start explaining in more detail.  “I thought you said I shouldn’t do anything big.  That I was too afraid.” 

Shuuichi’s eyes are sharp, but his smile is as kind as his real smiles (or what Takashi thinks are real -- maybe they're just a façade too) ever get.  “But you’re not afraid anymore, are you?”

Takashi is afraid.  He’s terrified.  Of failing as the Avatar.  Of doing the wrong thing.  He’s afraid that Shuuichi’s right, and he _is_ being too naïve.  He’s afraid of a lifetime of being expected to make such judgments. 

He’s afraid of losing the people important to him.

(He’s afraid of losing Kaname and Tooru.)

But. 

“I am afraid,” Takashi disagrees, and smiles.  “But I’m not alone.”

Shuuichi makes an ‘and there you have it’, sort of gesture, and continues. 

Takashi pays closer attention, this time. 

* * *

His life settles into a new pattern. Lessons with Shuuichi.  Refinement lessons with his earthbending instructor.  Discussions with what seem to be an endless array of people involved in the city government.  Discussions with Shuuichi of next steps, Tooru and Kaname in the room to provide second and third opinions because Takashi has no intention of becoming Shuuichi’s puppet, either.  Stolen moments alone with Tooru and Kaname, all the more precious for their rarity. 

“None of this is going anywhere!” he protests one evening, throwing up his hands in a rare show of temper, and _almost_ tempted by Shuuichi’s previous course of action. 

“There are always alternate options,” the man himself says, lazily amused. 

Takashi glares.  “No.”

“No, stubbornness was never his problem,” Kaname observes to Tooru.  She giggles. 

“You are making progress,” Shuuichi says, more seriously.  “It may not appear that way to you now, but you are making a difference.” 

Takashi hopes he’s right. 

* * *

Perhaps a month later, another prominent politician -- one of the most recalcitrant ones, and Takashi hates that for a moment, he’s almost relieved -- is killed, in a manner suspiciously close to Shuuichi's techniques. 

One look at Shuuichi’s face -- lips pursed, eyes grim -- is enough to convince him that his firebending instructor (and, in an odd, uncomfortable way, sort of almost friend) is not at fault. 

But when Shuuichi slips out that evening, Takashi follows, anyway. 

A couple minutes later, Shuuichi stops, and observes to a nearby cat, “If you’re planning on making a habit of this, remind me to start giving you lessons on stealth, as well.”

“I doubt my advisers would approve,” Takashi says, as he joins Shuuichi in observing the cat, who’s doing a valiant job of ignoring them both. 

Shuuichi slants him an amused glance.  “Would that stop you?”

Takashi shrugs, and grants him the honest answer.  “No.”

A pause.  “I didn’t kill him.”

“I know,” Takashi says.  “But you know who did, don’t you?”

Shuuichi’s silence is its own reply. 

When he starts walking again, Takashi matches his pace.  “I don’t suppose you’d accept it if I told you I could handle it?” 

Takashi lets his silence be its own reply, too. 

“Fine.  Just ... stay back and let me do the talking.”

* * *

Takashi does not expect the “talking” to involve a stranger kicking a wave of fire at Shuuichi’s head.  But given the way Shuuichi calmly bends out of the way and returns the favor, it’s apparently not entirely unusual, either. 

He watches from a corner, cataloging what he can of the stranger in the dim light of the room and the flashes of fire from both combatants.  He appears to be about the same height as Shuuichi, with the same lithe build, but the hair behind the mask is as black as Kaname’s and long, tied into a high ponytail that somehow manages to avoid the fire flying around as deftly as its owner. 

He wears a mask, too, the lower right black, the upper left mostly white, except for a black spot around where his eye would be, black designs radiating out from it. 

“How have you been, recently?”  Shuuichi asks, and slides away from a particularly vicious strike. 

“Irritated,” says a voice, lower than Shuuichi’s, which certainly sounds it. “I do not appreciate being called in to deal with a job _you_ have left unfinished, with no explanation.”

“I gave an expla --” Shuuichi breaks off during a particularly vicious exchange of blows “-- nation.  If they didn’t see fit to pass it on to you, you should really be irritated at them, not me.”

“I also do not appreciate --” a leg sweep “-- having an audience.”

“Not much I could do about that one, either,” Shuuichi somehow manages to shrug in the middle of a dazzling display of bending that reminds Takashi more of his fire dances than anything else.  “He’s persistent. Almost as annoying as me.”

“I don’t think that’s humanly possible,” Takashi observes. There appears to be no point in hiding further. 

As abruptly as the fight started, the stranger disengages, and Shuuichi stops as well.  They must fight (spar?) a lot, these two.  “On that, we agree.  Avatar.”

Takashi supposes he should be surprised the stranger knows who he is, but if he’s anything like Shuuichi, he’d have been more surprised if he didn’t. 

The mask swings towards Shuuichi.  “And?  Your explanation?”

Shuuichi shrugs again.  “The boy made some interesting arguments.  I was curious to see how they’d turn out.”

“Curious,” the stranger says, in the sort of tone usually reserved for something particularly noxious found on the bottom of one’s shoe.  “You left a job half-done out of _curiosity_?”

“Say rather that I’m re-examining my plan of attack,” Shuuichi says.  “The Avatar claims he can effect the change we want.  What does it hurt to let him try?” 

“Our reputation?”  The stranger suggests, in the voice of someone stating the obvious. 

“ _My_ reputation,” Shuuichi corrects.  “Take a different job, S --” he cuts himself off at the last moment.  There’s an awkward pause.  “Leave this one to me.  I promise I will see it through, one way or the other.” 

It hurts, to hear Shuuichi stating outright that he still intends to kill -- who knows how many other people, if Takashi cannot figure out how to forge a good solution.  But could he really expect any different? 

A pause.  “Very well.”  The mask turns towards Takashi and he tenses, wondering what the stranger will say. 

In the end, he says nothing -- just leaves. 

Shuuichi stares after him, the expression on his face too complex for Takashi to parse.  “Are you all right?”  Takashi asks. 

Shuuichi looks down at him and smiles, strained but as real as it ever gets.  “Let’s head back.”

* * *

It takes months, countless meetings, and even a handful of shouting matches, but eventually Takashi manages it. 

They all do, really -- he couldn’t have done it without Shuuichi’s insider knowledge, Tooru’s familiarity with the town, Kaname’s steadfast support and occasional common sense observation. 

“Not bad,” Shuuichi observes afterwards.  “I assume you’ll be moving on, now?”

Takashi nods.  “Our visit to the Fire Nation is --” he counts up the months and winces “-- a year overdue?” He hesitates.  “You’re welcome to come with us.”

Shuuichi waves him off, as Takashi had half-expected he might.  “I think I’ll stick around here a while longer.  Find another circus to join.” He laughs.  “Don’t look so worried.  You’ve gotten down pretty much everything I know how to teach you, except the flashy useless stuff that looks good in shows.”  He eyes Takashi.  “You probably _would_ make a decent fire dancer.  Not as good as me, of course.”

“Of course,” Takashi echoes dryly.  “I’ll keep that in mind, if I’m ever ... in need of a career change.”

Shuuichi laughs.  “You seem to have a pretty decent grasp on this Avatar thing, so I doubt that’ll be necessary.” 

Takashi looks down.  “Thanks.”  Looks back up again.  “I’ll miss you.”

Shuuichi ruffles his hair.  “Oh, I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again.  Good luck, kid.”

“Thanks,” Takashi says, as Shuuichi turns to leave.  He hopes the other man is right, that it won’t be for the last time.  “You too.”

* * *

Their visit to the Fire Nation goes without a hitch, as does their return to his home Air Temple for his official recognition as a fully realized Avatar. 

(He finds he’s nostalgic, certainly, but it doesn’t feel like _home_ anymore.)

(Home is Kaname and Tooru, now.)

* * *

Takashi travels, Tooru and Kaname at his side.  They go to the Northern Water Tribe to learn waterbending healing.  They spend several long weeks on a small volcanic island towards the western edge of the Fire Nation, playing with volcanic rock.  It may not be home, anymore, but Takashi still enjoys showing Kaname and Tooru every inch of the Air Temple he grew up in, filling the space with his own memories.

And everywhere they go, Takashi keeps an eye out for that flash of long silver hair in the corner of his vision.  Those small kindnesses. 

Occasionally, he can even find people who remember her, too, though always far older than they appear in his mind’s eye. But then, it has been over thirty years, now.  A lot can happen in that time. 

“Never understood why people call her ‘Cursed’,” one man says, an eye to his fishing pole as he talks to Takashi, Kaname and Tooru nearby and just as interested.  “Yeah, she was a strange one, Avatar Reiko.  But I figure it was a good strange, not a bad strange.” 

He eyes Takashi, who hopes he likes what he sees.

“World could do with more of her sort of strange,” the man says. 

Takashi wonders if he qualifies. 

He hopes so. 

**Author's Note:**

> Límíng (黎明), according to google translate, means ‘dawn’, which in Japanese is ‘yoake’ (夜明け). I chose that as my base word because it sounds similar to 'Yowake', the name of Natsume's high school (and thus possibly his town?) per volume 17. (I'd have translated the actual word, but since it doesn't appear to be a common word and I don't know its kanji, I don't know what meaning to use.)
> 
> Whether Límíng is actually the correct word or makes any sense at all as a city name ... *sheepish shrugging emoji* Hopefully someone will jump on me if it’s actively offensive?


End file.
